Group-IB, a Singapore-based Cybersecurity provider, has presented a clinical report that says that the financial damage induced by the ransomware attacks on the world economy in the past 6 months is $1 billion. The firm’s survey also concluded that neither private sector nor the public sector companies are immune to the dreaded file encrypting malware attacks.
Analyzed details from the data gathered between H1 2020 to H3 2020 confirm that there were over 500 successful ransomware attacks in over 45 countries. And it is estimated that the hackers could have gained around $1 billion- while the actual damage could have been much higher.
What’s amazing about the find is that most of the attacks have been detected in United States, with the country witnessing over 60% of ransomware incidents recorded across the world.
While Maze and RYUK made up to most of the attacks, NetWalker, DopplePaymer occupied the second place among the list of ransomware spreading operators who turned successful in the past 12-14 months.
So, Group-IB security researchers have concluded that most botnet operators are getting attracted towards the profits gained from ransomware so much that they have dumped spreading banking Trojans and have switched to spreading crypto-locking malware.
NOTE 1- All these facts were revealed in the CyberCrimeCon 2020 Virtual Conference held by Group-IB on Wednesday.
NOTE 2- Another reason for the success of ransomware spread is that 4 of the largest banking Trojan spreading hackers gangs- Dridex, Qbot, Silent Night and Trickbot have stopped spreading banking Trojans and have shifted to the spread of file encrypting malware.
